This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

In this chapter, you discover various ways you can personalize your new Samsung smartphone. Topics include the following:

Personalizing the Screen Background

Personalizing Screen Settings

Personalizing Sounds and Notifications

Out of the box, Samsung’s Galaxy S7/S7 edge is a nice-looking phone. It’s easy enough to learn how to use, the screens look good, and the operations feel natural.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything that you might want to change. Maybe you want a different screen background. Maybe you don’t like the sounds of the notifications. Maybe you don’t like notifications at all.

Well, you’re in good luck. There are lots of ways you can personalize your new Galaxy S7 or S7 edge to make the phone better fit the way you like to use it.

Personalizing the Screen Background

One of the first things that many people personalize about their phones is the screen background. On the Galaxy S7, you can set different backgrounds for the Lock screen and the Home screens. You can choose from preselected wallpaper images, or use one of your own photos as the background.

Readability

When choosing background images and colors, make sure that there’s enough contrast between the background and the foreground icons and text. Don’t sacrifice readability for a cool-looking background.

Change the Lock Screen Wallpaper

The Lock screen is the screen that appears when you power on or unlock your phone. You can set the Lock screen to have its own background wallpaper, or to share the background of the Home screen.

Swipe down from the top of the screen to display the notification panel.

Many of us like to use personal pictures—of our partners, children, or grandchildren—as background wallpaper on our phones. As you’ve just learned, it’s easy enough to choose a photo for your background, as long as that photo is already stored on your phone, in the Gallery. So if you have a picture you’d like to use, just make sure you save it to the Gallery first.

What about pictures you might receive via email or text message? Well, you can save these to the Gallery, also, just by using the “save” function within the appropriate app. For example, to save a picture you receive in the Messages app, tap the picture to display it fullscreen, then tap the Save icon at the bottom of the screen. Once in the Gallery, you can then select that photo for your wallpaper.

Change the Home Screen Wallpaper

You can similarly change the background image on your phone’s Home screens. (Actually, on both the Home and Apps screens.)

Swipe down from the top of the screen to display the notification panel.

Home screen wallpaper can display a motion effect, where the background appears to move slightly when you tilt the phone. To enable this effect, tap On the Wallpaper Motion Effect switch when you’re setting the Home screen wallpaper.

Change Your Phone’s Theme

If you want a more radical change to the way your phone looks, you can change the phone’s entire visual theme. A theme is a preset combination of background images, fonts, and icons that affect the look and feel of every system screen.

Swipe down from the top of the screen to display the notification panel.